I made these 2-ingredient pareve vegan sweet potato rotis -- and so can you! (with these 3 tips)

Ya know, there's nothing like a sister!  Let's all head out onto our balconies at 6 p.m. tonight and clap for our sisters.  No?  All clapped out? I thought so.

(if "clapped out" means something obscene, I don't want to know about it, so just leave me and my naivete in peace)

This vegan sweet potato flatbread recipe from Teenuja at Veganlovlie kept popping up in various social-media channels, as recipes do during corona times, when suddenly everybody has time to cook.  And I kept batting it away, ignoring it, vaguely interested but not quite enough to actually try it.

(Okay, I confess, maybe both the word "vegan" and the non-word "lovlie" deterred me a little... why pay money for a URL with a misspelling in it?)

And then my sister, who happens to be vegan, happened to mention that she'd happened to try it.  Which got those gear-wheels a-turnin', or whatever it is that gear-wheels do... and away I went the very next day.

They were SO easy, and super yummy.  Not just "super yummy for a 2-ingredient recipe" for "super yummy like you could serve them to company and nobody would ever suspect."

Today, I made them for the second time.  And I'm here to tell you that you can, too.  Practically that you should.

Now, I do want to jump right in and say this:
Two ingredients doesn't mean EASY.

I mean, they ARE easy.  But you will

need the right tools.  And you'll need to sweat a little about rolling them out and so on.  So maybe wait to invite company the second or third time you make them, not the first.

What kind of tools?

Awesome tools that make bread-making a pleasure:

(links in this section are affiliate links to Amazon – if you click, I get a couple of pennies, if you don’t, no big deal)

You'll need a solid wooden rolling-out surface that you can get simply covered in flour.  A big cutting board is fine, but I like my wooden table so I don't have to worry about confining myself to a small space.  (Read: I'm a messy baker.)

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(Question: why do all the “baking hands” in these product pictures belong to men???)

You'll probably need a good bench scraper.  If you don't have one of these, march out and get yourself one the second you're out of isolation or whatever.  Mine has saved my life billions of times when working with super-soft and sticky doughs.  Nothing sticks to anything when you have a bench scraper.  It doesn’t matter what the handle is made of as long as the business end is sharp and thin.

You'll also want a good cast-iron skillet.  I rediscovered this gorgeous one a couple of weeks ago that has been here all along, and it's amazing because it can make 4 flatbreads at a time (I guess it’s more of a griddle).  Preheat well.

So how do we weave this sweet potato magic?

This recipe works, in part, because the flour is pre-cooked by the heat of the sweet potato.  I have done this before when making scallion pancakes, which is a passion of mine, and a couple of other Asian-inspired doughs.  Flour gives off an amazing smell when it's mixed with almost-boiling water and kneaded.  If you've never experienced it before, you must.

Before you embark on this incredible journey, here are 3 tips to make your travels just a little more pleasant:

Awesome tips that put sweet-potato flatbreads in your mouth quicker & easier:

Tip #1: Not too much flour

The biggest tip I'd suggest when making these two-ingredient sweepo rotis / flatbreads / whatever you want to call them is to stop adding flour before you think there's "enough."  The dough is never going to stop being sticky.  That's okay.  Stop adding flour when you can knead it a bit, coat the ball in flour and it holds together and looks ball-shaped.

You'll probably be adding lots more flour to roll it out, and since too much flour makes flatbreads dry and hard, you need to stay on the safe side.

Tip #2: Steaming is great

Tip #2: Steaming the sweet potato, at least for me, with my Israeli sweet potatoes, seems to leave me with exactly the right quantity of moisture.  Obviously, because sweet potato size varies, you'll need different quantities of flour as well, so don't dump it in all at once.

Tip #3: Season it up (a bit)

Final tip:  even though it says two-ingredient -- add salt and pepper.  It makes them SO much better.  After the first couple of times, you can start playing around with other herbs if you'd like.  But honestly, I like this totally plain, once salt and pepper are in the mix.

Tip #4: Flatter = Better

Drat -- I said three tips, but here's #4:  Roll them as flat as you can, even if it means adding a little more flour so they don't stick to your work surface.  It's worth a few extra curse-words (not in front of the children!), because you'll get SUCH beautiful bubbles and a fluffier flatbread!

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I'm such a sucker for 2-ingredient recipes, and I'm so excited to have added these to my arsenal of cooking skills.

Here’s the recipe link again.  Not that you’ll need it after the first time.

Serving suggestions:

  • Okay, I feel like I'm doing this to spite my vegan sister, but honestly -- these are perfect with eggs
  • Or hummus
  • Or any kind of dairy product
  • Or, okay, wrapped around chicken, fake meat, or some other fajita-type filling
  • Or your favourite meat, dairy, or pareve curry
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    Really, anything you'd serve with an ordinary flatbread would work with these.  But you probably didn't need to hear that from me.  Trust yourself, and...

    Enjoy!  (or, in Israel, בתיאבון / betayavon!)

    Halachic Note -- according to some opinions, because these are made without water, they are somewhat sweet, and the flavour / colour of the sweet potato is still discernible in the finished product, the bracha is mezonos, not hamotzi.  According to other opinions, since the intention is to make bread and they are eaten as the centerpiece of a "bread meal," the bracha is still hamotzi.  Please check with a competent rabbi.




    Tzivia / צִיבְיָה

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